Bedecked

Well my little back deck is just about finished. It needs to get some deck skirt on it, real steps and to be sealed.

Skirting and stairs is DHs job, sealing is mine. We have always wanted deck going around at least two sides to the house but other pressing needs, budget and time have conspired against us. We figure we can add a section on every year at this point. Let's see if it works out. I am very happy to have this little starter section though as it makes my journey to the laundry line easier an much prettier.

In weaving news, there's been some! I am well over half way through the first pillow case and probably have 12-14 inches before I do the other half of the deep black/cream oxford hem. Then start on the hem for the second case. Weaving with 20/2 is just as time consuming in proportion as threading it was.

I finally got a warp ready for Hannah Hollandia using my new to me Harrisville Warping Reel.

I was awfully slow on it and it really isn't as efficient to use as a board on small warps but I needed the practice. There is a bit of learning curve to get smooth

and even on it. The warp is a mix of lace weight J. Knits 100% alpaca and Louet's KidLin linen and mohair blend. The scarf will be plain weave but using different sets and some skipped dents between the two fibers.

Could be a really neat scarf or it could be an utter failure. In either event I have certainly gotten a fair amount of learning from this little warp. I tried Peggy Osterkamp's method of winding the warp off the reel using a stick instead of chaining it.

I was a bit clumsy at it, but it has definite advantages over chaining, especially with a puppy in the house.

And speaking of Peggy, I picked up her new book, Weaving for Beginners An Illustrated Guide. I really didn't need a beginners book and I had given away my Learning to Weave by Chandler with the Murphy loom. This book is just so jam packed with tips and techniques and a great troubleshooting section it had to come home with me. I have never been able to fathom the Chandler book, I find it overly wordy, hard to follow, unwieldy techniques and the pictures cluttered and confusing. It just never made much sense to me even once I knew what I was doing. I still like the simple elegance of the Big Book of Swedish Weaving, but for tips and troubleshooting this Osterkamp book is fantastic.

I am also doing the silk writing prep work for the prayer flags and hoping to get them started early next week.

On farm news, there have been two small fires up here in the Greensprings since Saturday. The larger of the two was not too far from us, about 1.5 miles and erupted at 11 at night after a series of lightening strikes. The guys, both Greensprings Fire & Rescue and ODF (Oregon Department of Forestry) were on it through the night and kept it down to 5 acres. It was in a horribly inaccessible area that required a mile plus hike and some dozer work to get resources near. The second fire was a little smoker that came up yesterday morning after Tuesday nights round of thunder and lightening.

Both agencies again were right on it and were in mop up after only 5 hours and 1/2 acre burned. It was off of a dirt road about 6 miles from us and 4 miles in.

Bob has a new front tire after one of the old original tires finally wouldn't even take an inner tube anymore. The Subaru wasn't quite finished with it's annual meltdown and insisted on a new battery too. The horses all got their hoofy pedicures on Tuesday. Stella is getting her social outing Friday. I'll do my usual shopping errands on Sat. or Sun instead. We have three fun puppy friendly places to go and I'll let you all know how it goes in the next blog post.

She is getting so adult looking. The cute is beginning to give way and she is becoming a very pretty girl we think. And still the camera ham.

Why not, she's awfully photogenic and she knows it. Here she is yesterday, check out the green leaf tongue.